In 2024, the number of active beneficiaries of the system increased by 2.4%, to approximately 5.6 million people, according to the Directorate-General for Social Security (DGSS) and the Institute of Informatics.

However, in the data broken down by beneficiary origin – national or foreign – it is clear that there was only growth among foreign contributors (+15.1%), which more than offset a 0.1% decline among those with Portuguese nationality.

With last year's growth, foreign workers contributing to Social Security surpassed the one million mark for the first time, now representing almost a fifth of the contributors' universe. The fact that the number of contributors (18.9% of the total) exceeds the contributions made (12.4%) is related to lower salaries.